Hello world!

I’m back! In celebration of the submission of an MSc dissertation and the completion of a self-contained steampunk-ish story arc, the dark colours and gears have disappeared from the site, in favour of something lighter and more modern. However, in acknowledgement of the existential dread and confusion associated with such questions as “Should I be doing a PhD?” and “Could I persuade somebody to give me an advanced degree for writing a computer game about quantum physics (supposing I could figure out how to do so)?” the regular fiction posting schedule has also disappeared (for now).

Mechatropolis taught me that I’m capable of posting 1 500 words of science-interspersed-with-fiction a week. The story was less time-hungry than I expected, even. But it was also more creativity-hungry than I thought it would be. It’s shockingly easy to write

And then they went to another lecture and learned this cool science fact. And then an exciting science event happened. And then . . .

but “and then” doesn’t make for good stories. If I rewrote Mechatropolis now (perhaps I will someday), I think I’d focus on pulling more seemingly-disparate elements into a cohesive whole. As things stand, however, I’m already focusing on pulling seemingly-disparate elements into a cohesive whole. Major life decisions would seem to do that to a person.

It is thus, dear reader, that you find me here, writing a three-hundred-word blog post that links relatively tenuously to the previous site content. The writing-out part is nearly as hard (or perhaps harder — I’m a much more complicated person than are my imagined characters, it would seem), but I find it easier to pull single ideas together in this form. For the next few weeks, I’ll post ideas of this sort, rather than the long and complicated story kind. Some ideas only need three hundred words.

I also have an idea about a gnome who steps through the wrong portal and ends up in a calculus textbook instead of a fairy tale, which I suspect will need rather more.